Concentrated expertise in science and technology, r&d and manufacturing

Innovation and technical expertise are abundantly available in the GREATER GENEVA BERNE area (GGBa). The region is credited with the rise of global market leaders including Omega, Rolex (watchmaking), Nestlé, General Mills (food and nutrition), Cemex (cement), Firmenich, Givaudan (fragrances), Cisco, Nokia (telecoms), Merck-Serono, Lonza, Celgene (biotech), Bayer, Novartis, UCB Farchim, (pharmaceuticals), Johnson & Johnson (medtech), Logitech, VeriSign (ICT), Atmel, Semtech, Marvell (semi-conductors), Alcan (aluminum), Liebherr and Michelin (engineering).

Funding for the future

Research is a top priority in Switzerland and a source of not inconsiderable pride. More patents per capita are filed here than anwhere else in the world. With a leading scientific base in pharmaceuticals, the region’s above-average spending on fundamental and applied research is the result of a long-standing political desire to attract investment in high value-added sectors including:

• Life sciences and medical technology   
• Micro-nanotechnology   
• Information and communication technologies (ICT)
• Environmental technology
• Electronics
• Hi-tech healthcare

Country: R&D funding as a percentage of GDP
Switzerland: 2.9% - ahead of Germany, France and UK
EU average: 1.9%

Unique r&d partnerships

Cutting-edge companies choose the GGBa because of the potential for synergies with unique academic and research structures offering state-of-the-art resources. all the region’s universities are attached to institutes with which they collaborate on a multitude of highly specialised projects. These include:

• the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN),
• the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL),
• the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM),
• the IDIAP Research Institute (Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence),
• the Adolphe Merkle Institute (nanosciences),
• the Fribourg Technology Center, and
• the three University Hospitals of Berne (Insel), Geneva (HUG) and Lausanne (CHUV).

The National Science Foundation (FNS) and Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) also offer many research and innovation opportunities.

Clusters of potential

Owing to the concentration of skills in the GGBa, a number of networks, or “clusters”, have evolved to bridge the gap between science and industry. These include science parks, incubators, technology parks and networking platforms. According to the OECD, Switzerland is top in terms of developing knowledge-based industries in the 21st century, and is among the leading group for acquiring the new skills and technologies needed by the industries of the future. In terms of scientific output, Switzerland leads the global rankings for the number of scientific publications per million inhabitants; the country also has one of the highest levels of venture capital investment in R&D.